| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: as if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
"Laughing! are they laughing!" stammered Castanier.
He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the
house with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself
hurrying from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard,
bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the
scene changed. He recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de
l'Orangerie and the Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old
quartermaster. It was two o'clock in the morning, the most perfect
stillness prevailed, no one was there to watch his movements. The
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: of her husband. Lady Bothwell remonstrated on the improbability
that such pretensions as those of this foreigner could be founded
in anything but imposture.
"I care not," said the deserted wife, "what degree of ridicule I
may incur; if there be any one chance out of a hundred that I may
obtain some certainty of my husband's fate, I would not miss that
chance for whatever else the world can offer me."
Lady Bothwell next urged the unlawfulness of resorting to such
sources of forbidden knowledge.
"Sister," replied the sufferer, "he who is dying of thirst cannot
refrain from drinking even poisoned water. She who suffers under
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: He did what he wished."
"With HER?"
"With them all."
It was as if now in my friend's own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared.
I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her as
distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with decision:
"It must have been also what SHE wished!"
Mrs. Grose's face signified that it had been indeed, but she said
at the same time: "Poor woman--she paid for it!"
"Then you do know what she died of?" I asked.
"No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didn't;
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